The discourse around celebrity bodies is tired. First it was Adele, then Lizzo, then Selena. Now it’s Ariana Grande having to tell the internet to mind their own and stop talking about her body.
"I don't do this often, I don't like it, I'm not good at it," she began in a recent TikTok. "I just wanted to address your concerns about my body and talk a little bit about what it means to be a person with a body and to be seen and to be paid such close attention to."
The truth is, women in the public eye can’t win. They have to be thin but not too thin, curvy but toned, fit but not muscular, thick but not fat. The double standard of female body image is real, and the bottom line is we need to stop fixating on people’s bodies. Not just to protect those being talked about, but to protect the women and girls reading the garbage comments written about them.
As a society we are obsessed with weight and weight loss. Social platforms like TikTok are a breeding ground for commentary about celebrities' bodies, with criticism of weight gain and speculation about which celebs are using a certain diabetes drug for weight loss, absolutely rife.
Just like Ariana, I have had to weather the storm of conversations around my body and weight for my entire life. We may be at other ends of the weight (and fame) scale, but the “I’m just concerned about your health” rhetoric is something we have in common.
Before having my platform online I was criticised constantly about my weight by the people in my life who were supposed to love and protect me. In the run up to my wedding about six years ago, a friend suggested I go on the Cambridge diet to ‘”lose the weight fast”, a woman at work told me “If you don’t lose it now, you never will” and a family member said they would pay for my wedding if I lost half of my body weight.
Since having an online presence, it’s taken time to get used to unsolicited comments about my body from people I don’t know. But it’s actually not the obvious trolling that hurts the most. It’s the “I’m just concerned about your health.”, or the “I’m all for body positivity, but I don’t believe in glorifying obesity”.
"What about health?" is a phrase we often hear when conversations about body size come up. And I think the phrase tends to be a cop-out for people who have no idea how to respond in a respectful and informed way to discussions about health and weight.
The truth is, you can’t tell if a person is healthy or not by looking at them. We’ve been brainwashed to think that weight is the only measure of health, but that’s just not true. Health is so much more than a number on a scale: it encompasses mental health, stress, sleep, wellbeing, movement and so much more. And, even if someone isn’t healthy, it doesn’t mean they are not worthy or deserving of respect, dignity, and privacy.
It made me really sad that Christina Applegate felt the need to make a statement about why she looks different in the final season of Netflix's Dead to Me amid her multiple sclerosis diagnosis. And it wasn’t that long ago Adele was headline-fodder for her weight loss. Comments ranged from “What a glow up” and “She looks so much better” to “She looked so much better before” and “She shouldn’t have lost weight – what about her larger fans?”
What message does it send when we reduce these women’s entire existence to the way they look? Can we not normalise the fact that bodies change throughout a person's lifetime for many reasons, including hormonal changes, mental health, physical health, medication changes, and age?
“There are many different ways to look healthy and beautiful,” Grande said in the video. “I know personally, for me, the body you’ve been comparing my current body to was the unhealthiest version of my body.” She added that the physique fans were positioning as her “natural state” was actually a result of poor diet, antidepressants, and generally being in a really low point in her life.
She makes a good point. Even if you think you’re complimenting someone by commenting on their weight loss, you don’t know if that change is because of something like disordered eating, medication to treat an illness, depression, grief, divorce, or any number of other reasons.
I recently asked my followers if they’d been complimented for their weight loss when they were actually dealing with something traumatic, and 66% of them said yes. Here are some of the thousands of responses:
'I was struggling with post-natal depression after the birth of my daughter.'
'I could barely eat due to the stress of law school exams. I was petrified of gaining it back for fear of what people would say.'
'I was grieving a horrible loss.'
'I had a sceptic miscarriage.'
'I was depressed and not eating.'
'I lost five stone and found out I had Crohn’s disease. Everyone said how healthy I looked.'
'I got divorced and stopped eating. Apparently divorce ‘suited me’.'
'I had a miscarriage and couldn’t eat. First day back in the office after three weeks and got told how good I looked.'
'I was suicidal.'
I don’t think it’s necessarily our fault for being so interested in body size. We’ve been conditioned to all our lives by diet culture and the media to derive our worth from our looks, and this is a problem that’s been passed down from one generation to the next. And while I can’t control some of the responses I get on social media about my body, I can control how I feel and respond to them. I try and remember that people’s perceptions are subjective and, more often than not, inaccurate. They’re not a true reflection of who I am. They’re also likely to be a projection of their own insecurities. Rather than feeling devastated or diminished, I also try to see the bigger picture and have an objective understanding of the way I look. It is my firm belief that the way anyone looks is the least interesting thing about them. I’m also not afraid to stand up for myself and challenge people if I think they’ve overstepped.
Grande concluded her video by calling for us to be gentler with each other and asked people not to make assumptions about her health based on her weight. And I couldn’t agree more. We need to realise that bodies change, and that what other people look like is none of our business. Fat. Thin. Tall. Short. If it’s not your body, it’s not yours to comment on – celebrity or not.
Laura is co-host of Go Love Yourself Podcast available to listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.